Frankfurt basketball players have to win after bankruptcy against Bayreuth in Braunschweig
With heads hanging and expressionless faces, the Frankfurt Skyliners players high-fived the fans on the obligatory round after each game in the ball sports hall. As always, Quantez Robertson was the one who went ahead and then analyzed the 107:113 defeat against Bayreuth: “If you don’t play hard enough at the beginning, don’t communicate for almost the whole game and let two players score 67 points, you can didn’t win,” said the 38-year veteran.
The Skyliners couldn’t withstand the pressure and now put on even more pressure for the game on Tuesday (8.30 p.m.) in Braunschweig. The future of the club can be decided there. The Frankfurters lost the first leg at home 59:61. With a win of more than three points, they would pass the Lions, who were then tied, because they would have the direct comparison on their side. Then they would be Table-16. If the Skyliners lose, however, that should seal relegation, because they would then be four points behind the competition and only have a better direct comparison against the Central German BC. Then they would all have to win their games against Würzburg (May 1st), Crailsheim (May 5th) and Göttingen (May 7th) and hope that the competition would slip up. Not a likely scenario.
“We made it harder for ourselves again today,” said Lukas Wank. If you let Bayreuth gamble, they could also be quite good. Ahmed Hill, 37 points and Otis Livingston, 30 points, made Frankfurt dizzy. It wasn’t enough that six Frankfurters scored double digits. Isaiah Washington was the most successful with 23 points. The Skyliners have never conceded 113 points in a home game. After the first half, the Skyliners were 36:55 behind against a team that hadn’t won a single away game to date and couldn’t use their best player, Brandon Childress. “If you don’t play physically, you can’t dictate a game like that,” said head coach Klaus Perwas.
In the second half, the Skyliners played offensively like unleashed, hit nine of eleven three-point attempts in the third quarter and scored 40 points. However, it was only enough to reduce the gap to five points because they were not given defensive stops. In the final phase, Robertson even brought his team up to three points (92:95). But Frankfurt never got to the point where they could really have turned the game around.
Principle of short-term memory
“I imagined it differently, too,” said Perwas. He had heard many voices in the run-up to the Bayreuth game as a sure win and looked at the Braunschweig game. “If we had won today and you lose on Tuesday at 30 in Braunschweig…” Perwas said without finishing the sentence. He prescribed the principle of short-term memory for his team. Check off each game quickly and look to the next.
“We have a team, if they were like that together from the start, that has a 50/50 chance of winning games,” Perwas said. However, you are now in a phase where you have to win 75 percent of the games. This means that each individual has to play at the absolute limit in every game so that it is still enough to stay up in the league. The first step is to win in Braunschweig. The Skyliners still have their fate in their own hands. On Tuesday around 10.15 p.m. it will be decided in which direction it will go.
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